seoul. seoul is grand. for those of you who got my group email, you know my motivations for my visit to seoul; they will unfold in the months to come. if you're reading this blog and you're curious what said motivations are, send me an email.

first, after honing my 'attack', i took a lengthy subway journey to yongsan market, a crazy place where you can buy ridiculously discounted audio/visual/computer gadgetry. i got myself a canon S50 digital camera with an extra 128 mb memory card for 550,000 won. that's about 550 bucks. i'm pretty sure that after taxes, the same package would be about 650 canadian bucks. but who knows. actually, dell.ca is selling it for 750 dollars CDN. holy shit. shitty thing is i need a voltage converter for it, it's made for the japanese market, and they have the same kinds of plugs as we do in canada.

next was a trip to "lotte world" and for those of you who waded through my "political economy" post you'd know just how much big corporations permeate life here. well lotte, the big food company, has this crazy indoor vegas-like amusement park. it has a rollercoaster that monster, six of the hagwon kids and myself decided to go on four times. given that queues are generally a little more intense in asia, it was a bit tiresome standing around. there are no chiropractors in this country, so i felt like shit at the end of the evening. plus i swear the place is made of bird flu. they were going to try concrete and drywall but they decided on bird flu.

but my theory with rollercoasters is that they're too damn short. you spend an hour waiting in line for 1.5 minutes of speed and loops. that's why i'm going to invent the ALL DAY rollercoaster. you get on, and 8 hours later your soul is fully cleansed of iniquity. ALL DAY ROLLERCOASTER. and i thought BABY HUNT was a good band name...

the real fish bone in my craw about this trip was the jim-jil-bang, the public bathhouse. now a bathhouse is a good idea. it's public shower/sauna/hot spring thing right in the city. it's relaxing as hell after schlepping around seoul for a day and getting lost 3 times on the subway.

then i found out we weren't sleeping in a hotel, we were sleeping in the dorm rooms at the jim-jil-bang. which is fine i guess. it's warm, you get clean pillows and stuff. korean floors are padded as hell and the heating comes from pipes under the floor. why bitch at midnight when monster has kept you up pretty much the whole night before (see last post)? so i go have myself hottub sit with a bunch of other naked dudes, take a nice shower, wonder if i'm burning any retinae with my caucasian-ness... and retire to the sleeping room.

korean men snore.

oh my god, do they snore. like wildebeests with asthma.

there were about 20 men in the room that was about the size of 4 living rooms. about 5 of them were snoring so loud that wadded up toilet paper and 2 pillows over my head didn't help. once again, i got about 3 hours of sleep.

then i woke up to find that the "genius" of korean technology, the heated floor, had given me a nice first-degree burn on my left hip. i always sleep on my left side, and i guess the heat was so high it burnt my skin through the quilt-mattress that hannah claimed "was so good for your back". what a crock.

yeah so the jim-jil-bang is another part of korean culture that should be experienced... but once you've experienced it, you can truly live without it. if i want another mineral bath i'll sprinkle epsom salts on my arse in the shower.

the rest of the day was spent trying to ditch monster and the kids (who i actually really like). seoul is great... i can't wait to live there, hee hee hee (rubs hands together evilly).

i finally got to hook up with my good buddy mr. lee, one of the kindest people i've ever met. we had some beers, ramyun and soju and a bunch of good conversation.

and now i'm back in andong planning something sinister that will hopefully end with tragedy for some and comedy for others.